Page 5 - ELG1803 Mar Issue 455

WELCOME . EDITOR’S LETTER

Very British problems.

When reporting on ELT from a London office, it’s easy to get obsessed theteam
with the UK, but the future of English is global, writes Melanie Butler
MELANIE
‘Never forget you’re British’ . That was the sobriquet bestowed by a Hausa BUTLER,
editor-in-chief,
speaking radio presenter on a BBC English by Radio course I once produced for started teaching
broadcast in West Africa. EFL in Iran in
As the young and foolish junior radio producer, I had inadvertently come up 1975, she worked
with the original name: ‘Don’t forget your English’. for the BBC
World Service,
It’s a very British problem. Pearson/Longman and Modern
You edit a newspaper out of London and you try as hard as you can to take a English teacher magazine before
global perspective. taking over at the Gazette in
1987 and also launching Study
You run news from around the world: China, Israel, Zimbabwe. You print the Travel magazine. Educated in ten
latest research from the US and fill your newsroom with multilinguals. schools in seven countries she
And then twice a year you print the results of the British Council inspections of UK language speaks fluent French and Spanish
and rather rusty Italian.
centres and all of a sudden everything goes all Rule Britannia on you.
Why do we only print the results of UK inspections? Because as far as we know it is only the IRENA
British who publish them. BARKER,
commissioning
Publishing results in the press is up there with teacher observation and endless policy paperwork
Our magazine is the press is up there with in the pantheon of Britain’s educational studied French
editor,
Publishing results in
and linguistics at
achievements.
Durham, UK and
As Paul Fear of the British Accreditation
taught English in France for two
Council knows. His new scheme for English
years. Her subsequent 15-year
teacher observation and
read endless policy paperwork in programmes overseas aims to bring the tradition career in UK news journalism
of the British school inspector to the local
includes reporting for local and
language school in Lima and Lahore, as he
regional newspapers, a news
explains in our back page interview.
agency and a 10 year stint at the
the pantheon
Times Educational Supplement
It’s all so very English.
magazine.
Three cheers for our Teacher’s Pet. Barbara
in more than of Britain’s educational Anna Zielonka, the Polish teacher of English FEDERICA
TEDESCHI,
who works in Norway is up for the Global

achievements
senior reporter, is
Teacher Prize.
a NCTJ qualified
And as for our decision to send President
reporter who
gained journalistic
Macron to the Naughty Step?
experience in
La perfide Albion.
150 countries British ELT. As we reveal in our top story on Malta, Italy and the UK. She
Not that all is shipshape in the world of
holds a Masters in International
Relations from the University of
Perugia, Italy as well as a Celta
page 6, none other than the British Council
from Westminster College,
is allowing accredited schools to meet the
London and has taught languages
inspection requirement for all-graduate teachers
at a university and schools in
London. Federica, who also
and we have 6,700 while employing teachers without a degree. ANDREA PÉREZ
freelances in video production, is
It’s a case of the best person for the job, say
a member of a NUJ committee.
the British Council.
It’s a case of a historic low in graduate
EGIDO, online
unemployment, says English UK, the association
and production
of accredited schools, regretfully. Their new
online subscribers teaching and remains, as she explains on page 26, a passionate teacher. manager,
chief executive, Sarah Cooper, came from
has a BA in
Journalism from
Complutense
On page 10, we report on a study showing that students are translanguaging into a multilingual
University, Madrid and a Masters
world: perhaps the sun is finally setting on the old empire of the monolingual Brit.
in Corporate Communications
Will the last native speaker to leave the classroom, please turn out the light? The rest of us are on
London. She previously worked
a plane to get a job in Hawaii. from Kingston University,
As Claudia Civinini tells us, its multilingual, multicultural and more than on the international desk at the
Spanish newspaper La Razón.
happy to hire great teachers, whatever their mother tongue. MELANIE BUTLER, She joined the Gazette as online
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and social media editor in 2015.
*Data from 2017 editorial@elgazette.com 5